That's something he was unable to accomplish in 1998, when the state Senate failed to pass a bill he sponsored that prohibited children from riding in pickup beds. The state House did approve the bill.

"This is the kind of stuff we need to do," he said Monday evening from his office in Washington, D.C.

Alabama has laws requiring small children and infants to be properly restrained and that all youths 14 and younger wear a seatbelt. That's simply not safe enough, Rogers said, because strictly speaking, the law only applies to people inside the vehicle, not on the outside, such as a truck bed.

"If you have a 3-year-old child, they have to be in a child restraint if they're inside the truck. If you put them in the cargo bed and go down the interstate at 70 miles per hour, there's no law against that," he said.

Rogers was a practicing attorney before entering politics, and he said his interest in passing legislation on pickups and passengers stemmed from a case where he was legal counsel. There were a number of high school students who had participated in a homecoming parade, who suffered severe injuries when the pickup they were riding in wrecked and catapulted them, Rogers said.

The human projectiles that pickup passengers can become when launched from the back of the truck is one reason state Rep. Wayne Johnson, R-Ryland, said he may pre-file a bill relating to the matter before the next legislative session.

Some people can argue that passengers assume the risks when they ride in the back of a pickup, but those passengers are potential dangers to other motorists if they become airborne, he said.

"I think it will be a very good bill and should pass. It should be worth a very good, stiff effort from us so we can make sure something like (Sunday's wreck) doesn't happen again."

Johnson serves on the House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee. A bill on traffic safety could be sponsored by any member of the Legislature, but it would have to pass through the public safety committee.

A bill he has in mind would allow farmers to carry passengers in the truck bed as long as the vehicles are in the field or on private roads. But once the truck is on a county road or a public highway, all people should be inside the cab, Johnson said.

State Rep. Kerry Rich, R-Albertville, who represents Marshall and DeKalb counties, said he would seriously consider such a bill, but added he would want to discuss it with other lawmakers before he decides whether it's worth supporting.

"I would want to be careful not to restrict people riding in the back of a pickup doing farm work and not having so many restrictions where a church group or some other group couldn't have hayrides," he said.

Rogers said he made several compromises on his failed bill in 1998, including exemptions for farmers.

"I had opposition from everybody," he said. "The Farmers Federation was against it because they wanted to move workers in the field. So I made an exception to allow them on farms."

Some complained that they needed to transport players in youth sports, so Rogers said he changed the bill to allow children 12 and older to ride in the back of trucks, except on highways.

The Alabama Department of Public Safety even opposed the bill, citing it would be too difficult to enforce, particularly determining if a child was under age 12, he said.

Rogers said he intends to pass national legislation that would require states to ban passengers from riding in cargo beds as a requirement to getting federal highway dollars.

The past House chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Bill Schuster of Pennsylvania, agreed to adding the requirement in the next transportation bill, Rogers said. He is confident new committee chairman, John Mica of Florida, will support it, too.

The real challenge now is finding new revenue sources to pass a new transportation bill, Rogers said, noting it has been since 2005 since the last transportation bill passed.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Alabama is
one of 19 states in the nation that does not prohibit passengers riding
in cargo areas of pickups.